Instead of a “them”

Aliza and I went to the equality rally hosted by the cast of Hair yesterday and were only mistaken for a couple once, far as we could tell. (To which she said, “Hey mister, she’s my sister!” Sisters? We’re close.)

David Hyde Pierce and Cynthia Nixon were both fantastic speakers. The Mayor and the Governor showed up, which made me mildly regret snapping at a Bloomberg caller about term limits and The American Constitution the other day. The group behind the rally – which was apparently organized in just ten days – is called Broadway Impact. Beyond the great organization Classical Action, I continue to be concerned about the lack of activism in the classical music industry.

Will the cast of Next to Normal be raising awareness about mental illness? I hope so; the Broadway gauntlet has been thrown. And speaking of Next to Normal, I’d like to take this opportunity to raise some awareness of my own about its rampant cruelty to classical music; nobody talks about my boyfriend like that and gets away with it! The daughter in the musical, a nerdy overachiever destined for The Ivy League, is a classical pianist. She drinks Red Bull is Very Uptight. Shortly into the story, she is hit on by a jazz pianist who is cool and likes drugs. But not scary chemical drugs – just the natural, I-guess-OK kind. To drive his casual-ness home, he also wears a hoodie.  He doesn’t like classical music because “you have to play the notes that are on the page”.  Her defense of classical music is that “Mozart wrote poems about farts”. It seems even Next to Normal thinks women don’t like jazz. Only after the daughter has a total breakdown does the Oversimplification Fairy arrive, and the girl then expresses her loosening-up/meltdown by playing non-classical music. Was the Next to Normal band not playing “the notes on the page”, one might wonder?

But I digress. Here are some faux toes from Sunday: